Cosmin Costean
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Limassol, Cyprus
Toptal member since January 1, 2020
An innovative and performance-driven entrepreneur with a passion for tech and business, Cosmin has 15+ years of experience in various roles such as project manager, product manager, business analyst, head of product, and executive director. He has a proven track record of leading products from conceptualization to commercial success. Cosmin's won multiple awards for technological innovation and holds certifications in AI product management, UX research, design thinking, and disruptive strategy.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Business Process Modeling
- Business Strategy
- Design Thinking
- Market Research
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
Work Experience
Product Lead
Saudia Airlines
- Led the initiative for building an AI-based internal revenue management system and marketing optimization engine.
- Released the first POC with extremely good results.
- Ensured stakeholder and top management communication and buy-in.
Senior Tehnology Product Manager
Booking.com
- Led the team that designed, implemented, and maintained the NoSQL database infrastructure inside Booking.com, serving 50+ teams across the organization.
- Defined the vision, roadmap, and backlog for a portfolio of on-premise and cloud data solutions based on market research and stakeholders' needs.
- Collaborated with engineering managers and solution architects to evaluate and implement services and architectures that enable cloud transformation.
Head of Product
TUI UK
- Conceptualized and executed a set of tools alongside my team, which brought more than €10 million in yearly revenue.
- Managed the team budget of over €2 million annually.
- Demonstrated expertise in budget management, goal setting, and effectively communicating with the company's board of directors.
- Created the strategy, objectives, and KPIs for the portfolio products and implemented the processes that sustained the product development.
- Led a team of 50 engineers, designers, and product managers.
Product Manager
SafeBridge
- Led the Mycert.com product from the conceptual stage to the market. Won two technological innovation awards for a blockchain-based digital certificate issuing system and robot process automation in identity management.
- Defined and implemented the product strategy and roadmap.
- Oversaw budgets and processes and managed board relations.
- Managed the team budget of over €1 million annually.
Founder | Product Manager
Smart Solutions Factory
- Grew the company from 3 to 25 people and more than €400,000 in ARR.
- Led the company from the initial stages until its acquisition in 2017.
- Acted as a product manager, leading a distributed team of 10 developers and designers.
- Conducted market research and communicated with customers to identify and formulate their requirements.
- Managed the overall strategy, objectives, and budget.
Executive Director
Indevra Software
- Led the company for a €500,000 private investment.
- Developed the product vision, strategy, and roadmap.
- Created the team and the business processes from scratch.
- Spearheaded one of the most successful social media initiatives in Romania.
Founder | Consultant
Management Solutions Factory
- Served as either a project manager or business analyst in over 50 implementations of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, SAP Business One, Tableau BI, Microsoft Power BI, and QlikView.
- Involved in business process modeling and optimization for retail, eCommerce, payments, and manufacturing customers.
- Created RFPs and assessed the impact of technology on business processes.
Project Manager
Senior Software
- Participated in over 20 implementations of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Tableau BI.
- Involved in business process modeling, optimization, and gap analysis.
- Trained users on Tableau BI and the sales, marketing, and support modules of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Consultant
Julsoft Group
- Participated in over 10 implementations of ERP, CRM, and WMS solutions.
- Assisted customers in formalizing financial, commercial, and logistic business processes and gathering business requirements.
- Involved in data gathering, data analysis, and migration.
- Trained users and set up, tested, and documented the solutions.
Project History
Performio EPM
Created an enterprise performance management platform from the ground up based on the balanced scorecard framework.
myCert
https://www.mycert.com/Succesfully lead from ideation to go-to-market mycert.com, whose mission was to reduce certificate fraud and automate certificate issuing and identity management in maritime industry.
TUI Lodging Place
I collaborated with my team to create a set of ML tools for the hospitality industry, which brought more than EUR 10 million in annualized returns.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Economics
The Spiru Haret University - Bucharest, Romania
Certifications
IBM Data Science Professional Certificate
IBM
AI Product Management Specialization
Duke University
User Experience Research and Design Specialization
University of Michigan via Coursera
Strategic Management and Innovation
Copenhagen Business School
Mastering Design Thinking
Sloan School of Management online
Disruptive Strategy
Harvard Business School Online
Balance Scorecard
Strategsys
Corporate Strategy
EXEC-EDU
Agile Project Manager
APMG
ITIL (The Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
APMG International
ISO 9001 Lead Auditor
Quasaro
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Business Solutions Specialist
Microsoft
Skills
Tools
Tableau, Board Reporting
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile, Design Thinking
Platforms
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Blockchain
Industry Expertise
Education Technology (Edtech)
Other
Business Strategy, CRM Systems, Performance Management, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Software as a Service (SaaS), Early-stage Startups, Business Processes, Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Customer Analysis, Roadmaps, Digital Product Management, Data Analysis, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Balance Scorecards, Budgeting, Business Process Modeling, ITIL, Product Management, Project Management, User Experience (UX), Market Research, Manufacturing, Retail & Wholesale, Machine Learning, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Travel, Marketing, Social Media, Databases, Cloud Migration, eCommerce, AI Marketing, Data Science
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring